by Lauren Layne
“Thank you so much. These are great,” she said, locking her phone and dropping it into her purse. “I’ll absolutely be sure to tag the Belles.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it,” Alexis said, giving her arms a quick rub against the cold since she hadn’t grabbed her coat on the way out. “Now, I meant what I said. Clarke, take this woman to dinner.”
“Will do. I’ll even let her pick the place.”
“You say that as though I don’t always pick,” Audrey said, linking her arm in his as they walked down the steps.
“True, though if you pick one of those obnoxious small plate places, I will exercise veto power,” he said, relieved when he felt the world right itself again as they became Audrey and Clarke once more, friends and only friends.
The last thing Clarke wanted was for the most stable relationship in his life to turn upside down.
Chapter Nine
THURSDAY, JANUARY 23
Could @TheAudreyTate’s “fiancé” be ANY more bored to be at dinner with her? Looks like she’s about to lose another one (but did she ever have him…?)
—@ScandalBoyNYC
Happy now?” Audrey asked as she set her menu aside and took a sip of her red wine. “They have steak on the menu.”
“Very,” he said. “Want to start with the oysters?”
“Sure,” she said distractedly, picking up her cell phone and holding it up. “You mind if I’m rude for a second? I’m dying to edit the Wedding Belles photo and post it.”
He waved his hand, used to Audrey spending time on her phone and not minding in the least. Her phone was her job, and her job wasn’t nine-to-five. He knew that if he needed her full attention, he’d have it without a second thought. That if he needed her in any way, she’d have tossed her phone into a fire and given him every ounce of her energy.
But he didn’t need her now, was content to have a moment to catch up on his own work. Clarke was second in command behind his father at York, Inc., a media conglomerate that had done well to keep its head above water even as competitors bit the dust. As vice president of strategy, Clarke knew full well that much of that success was due to him. When other media companies had clung desperately to their print publications, their bread and butter in the twentieth century, Clarke had been one step ahead of everyone else. He’d been the persistent twenty-something who’d annoyed his more senior colleagues in every meeting, not just by virtue of being the CEO’s son, but because Clarke had been relentless in his insistence that the company make a name for themselves in the digital space back when the digital space was still forming.
Eventually the old farts had simply turned the entire digital department over to him, probably hoping he’d fail. He hadn’t. As competitors were just starting to notice the decline in print sales, York was ahead of the game, already primed to serve content to an ever more device-reliant public via apps and an optimized website.
Clarke’s colleagues and superiors hadn’t hesitated to give credit where it was due, and Clarke had risen through the ranks quickly, he liked to think, because of his contribution rather than his last name.
Especially since the one person who stubbornly resisted giving Clarke even a modicum of praise was his own father. Alton made it clear every chance he got that Clarke didn’t hold the second-in-command spot alone. He shared it with the vice president of operations, Maria Folse, who had her eye on the CEO position.
Clarke respected Maria. Hell, he liked her. He enjoyed wine-filled dinner parties with her and her wife every bit as much as he enjoyed butting heads with her in the conference room.
But he had zero intention of conceding the company to her, no matter how often his father tried to undermine him. Not that Alton ever undermined Clarke in front of Maria or anyone else in the company. His father, for all his flaws, was a professional.
In private, however, he never let Clarke forget the boy he’d been. The teen who’d sworn up and down he wanted no part in the family business. The frat boy who’d ignored his mother’s wishes that he go into law and his father’s wishes that he get his degree in business.
Clarke had instead gone into computer science, partially, yes, to dodge his parents’ expectations, but also because he’d found the classes to be enjoyable. And Clarke had always figured, even from a young age, that life was supposed to be enjoyed, even if his parents had never seemed to get the message.
The biggest irony was, it was probably the computer science degree his father had been so damn set against that had saved his precious company in the first place. Without that degree, Clarke wouldn’t have had nearly enough know-how to push York in the right direction. And because fate was a tricky beast, what had started as Clarke wanting to prove his father wrong—or maybe just prove himself—had turned into a genuine love for the company. Growing up, he’d never understood how his father could be so consumed with a company. And while he still vowed never to let a job matter more than people, a part of him understood. When you poured your energy into something, it became a part of you. Like it or not—and most of the time he didn’t like it—this company had become a part of Clarke. Something worth fighting for.
Clarke winced as he checked his email, noting that the number of unread messages was nearing triple digits, just in the couple hours since he’d left the office.
A handful of them were from Maria, who hadn’t wasted any time in taking advantage of Clarke’s distraction with his upcoming “wedding” over the past couple weeks. He had no doubt she was making sure Alton knew she was still in the office while Clarke was off sipping wine with his fiancée.
Clarke had no idea how much his father knew about the fake nature of his and Audrey’s arrangement. He certainly hadn’t given the old man the details, and as far as he could tell, Linda rarely told her husband anything about her master plan for the family. Clarke did know, though, that even if Alton thought the engagement was real and that Audrey was about to become his daughter-in-law, it wouldn’t have mattered. Clarke would have been penalized for choosing anything over the company. Including his own wedding.
Most of Clarke’s incoming emails were merely FYIs, and he made quick work of archiving them. A few necessitated easy responses, which he fired off, and a handful more required more mental energy than he had at the moment. He flagged those to deal with first thing in the morning.
He glanced up at Audrey and saw that her tongue was tucked into the right side of her cheek, the way it always was when she was focusing, so he turned his attention back to his phone, pulling up Instagram to see just how ridiculous he looked in the photo.
She hadn’t posted yet, still doing whatever she did that made her photos look far more impressive than he’d thought a camera phone capable of. Killing time, he mindlessly scrolled through photos of friends’ happy hours and workouts and a couple of taillights with the usual griping about the city’s rush hour traffic.
The photos more or less blurred together, until one in particular caught his attention.
Clarke had been idly leaning back in his chair, but he slowly sat up straight, feeling his blood pressure rise at the photo of himself.
In the picture, Clarke was glaring down at his iPhone, wearing the exact suit he was wearing now, in the exact restaurant he was currently sitting in, drinking the exact martini he’d just taken a sip of. It had to have been taken within the past few minutes.
Clarke didn’t even have to see the handle to know which account it was. He’d started following @ScandalBoyNYC under a fake account the moment the twerp had started giving Audrey trouble. The guy hadn’t posted anything in the past couple of days relating to Audrey, but the text below the photo of him scowling made him see red.
How dare a complete stranger assess what he was thinking, what he was feeling, or dare to imply that Audrey could ever lose him.
He took a deep breath to fight for control, resisting the urge to look around the room to find out who the hell had crossed the line into such a blatant invasion of privacy.
&nbs
p; Instead, he focused his energy on Audrey. Judging from her thoughtful look with her tongue still in her cheek, she was editing her photo or writing her caption and hadn’t yet seen the story.
Casually, as though he hadn’t a care in the world, Clarke set his phone aside, keeping his expression deliberately bored and reaching out to take a sip of his cocktail as though not in the least bit perturbed by what he’d just been viewing on his phone.
Relaxing his posture, he leaned forward slightly.
“Audrey.”
“Mmm,” she said distractedly, not looking up from her phone.
He resisted the urge to say her name more sharply, to let her know they were being watched. Having her full attention on her phone was not exactly selling them being madly in love.
He reached slowly across the table and touched her hand. She jerked in surprise, but he wrapped his fingers around hers, hoping no one noticed how startled she’d been to have her fiancé casually hold her hand.
She looked up at him in bewilderment, and he forced an easy smile, even as he lowered his voice to let her know what was going on.
“Seriously?” she said after he’d dropped the bombshell. “Someone’s here? Watching us?”
“Apparently. No, don’t look!” he admonished. “Honestly, you’re not very good at this whole clandestine romance thing.”
“Believe it or not, pretending to be in love with my best friend doesn’t come all that easily,” she snapped, clearly rattled.
Clarke’s thumb stopped idly stroking her knuckles, a little surprised by the stab of… hurt?
Not that he expected her to be in love with him. He wasn’t in love with her. But it didn’t exactly feel good to know that the one person he cared about more than anything thought him such an unworthy romantic partner.
Could he blame her, though? Audrey knew him well. Knew exactly just how cavalierly he treated relationships. Suspected, even, Clarke’s deepest shame.
He hadn’t even known his darkest secret until she’d told him about the pact she’d made with Naomi and Audrey to protect one another from heartbreakers. But the moment she’d told him, he’d known. He’d known that he was one of those men.
Not one of the good ones. He was a Brayden. He was one of the men the women had sworn to protect one another against.
All this time, he’d wondered if Audrey realized. Now he was fairly certain.
She knew.
Still, knowing who Clarke really was didn’t mean she couldn’t pretend to be enamored with who he was pretending to be. Saving her reputation was the least he could do for her, but he needed her to sell it a lot better than she was currently. Her spine was straight, her eyes wide, her face white.
“Put your phone away,” he commanded gently. “Slowly, indifferently, like whatever’s happening on your phone doesn’t matter one way or another to you.”
She did as he instructed, leaning down and dropping the phone into her bag.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now give me your other hand.”
His right hand still holding hers, he set his left palm up on the table. She hesitated only briefly before setting her right hand lightly atop his.
“Smile,” he said, holding both her hands now. “No, not a big grin, just a little private smile, like we’re having a nice conversation.”
“But we are not having a nice conversation. You’re being bossy,” she pointed out.
“You look nice today,” he said, stroking his thumbs over her knuckles. “Is that a new lipstick?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Showing interest in my fiancée and hoping the Peeping Tom in the restaurant with us notices. Your turn.”
She sighed slightly. “Fine. How was your day?”
“Do better,” he said in exasperation.
“How’d your presentation to the board go?”
“Solid wifely question,” he praised with a wink. “And good. Maria couldn’t find much to nitpick about, so that’s always positive.”
She watched him closely. “And your dad? What did he think?”
Clarke shrugged. “Hard to read. He didn’t seem displeased by my team’s suggestions, so that’s a start.”
“He’ll come around, you know. He’s just making you earn your stripes before he hands over the company reins.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re good at your job,” she said, squeezing his hands. “And more important to me, it’s obvious that you love it. Something, by the way, I never thought possible back when you wanted to be a safari tour guide as a kid.”
“I maintain that that was a solid career track.”
“Yes, but it’s mostly honeymooners,” she teased. “Whomever would you sleep with?”
His grin slipped slightly. “Is that all you think I care about?”
She looked surprised at his tone. “No. Of course not. I mean, I don’t know. You said yourself today you’d never thought about your wedding. I guess I realized I’ve never been able to picture you getting married either.”
Clarke started to withdraw his hands, but Audrey tightened her grip.
“Hold on,” she protested. “I didn’t mean to say that you wouldn’t make a great husband. I mean that you’ve never shown interest in a long-term relationship. Outside of Elizabeth.”
He heard the question in her voice, but he didn’t answer it.
“Did you mean what you told the wedding planner?” he asked. “Is the spectacle your dream wedding?”
She hesitated, clearly tempted to press him to talk about his ex, but instead she smiled and shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t know how you’re surprised. I mean, you saw my wedding scrapbooks when I was twelve.”
“Saw? You once made me spend an entire afternoon gluing pictures of wedding cakes into a spiral notebook.”
“An even exchange for me passing that note to Steffi Miller at ballet class.”
“That took you five seconds. Those damn cake pictures took hours.”
“I seem to remember that the result of that note passing was you and Steffi making out in Bryant Park. I got exactly nothing out of those wedding notebooks.”
“Not true. You just started your wedding planning really, really early. Now you have a head start.”
“Yeah, for a wedding that won’t be happening.”
“Well, I mean, no, not yours and mine. But your real wedding.”
Even as he said it, the thought felt strange. Objectively, he’d always known Audrey would likely get married someday just as sure as he’d known that he likely would not. But now he realized just what Audrey’s inevitable marriage would mean. No more dinners like this one, just the two of them. No more being each other’s last-minute dates to events and fund-raisers. No more casual Friday nights binging on The Fast and the Furious.
“Wait, my real wedding?” she said, looking surprised. “I thought out of everyone you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I don’t want to get married.”
Clarke blinked. He’d known this woman his whole life, and she very rarely surprised him. But she shocked the hell out of him now.
“Why the hell did I have to glue those wedding cake pictures, then? Since when have you not wanted to get married?”
Her smile was a little sad. “Since Brayden.”
His fingers clenched hers, and he noted out of the corner of his eye that their server was doing yet another walk-by, but wisely read the situation and kept moving so as not to interrupt.
“Dree, you know better than anyone that he was actual human waste. I’m not glad he died, but I’m glad you’re not with him anymore. You can’t let him ruin your life.”
“I’m not!” she insisted. “I’m perfectly happy single.”
“What happens when you meet someone?”
She hesitated. “Well, that hasn’t happened, has it? The closest has been Randy, and look how that turned out.”
He shook his head. “You were never going to marry Rand
y, even if he hadn’t turned out to be a married weirdo. But, and I mean this as a compliment, you’re marriage material.”
“Says the man who doesn’t want to get married.”
“Says the man who knows you. And I know you’ve always wanted a husband and a family and a dog.”
She pressed her lips together, seeming to gather her thoughts. “You said I couldn’t let Brayden ruin my happiness.”
He nodded. Damn straight.
“Well, the thing is, Clarke, I… I’ve never been able to forget about the fact that I ruined Claire’s happiness.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What’s Claire have to do with whether or not you get married?”
“Because I was so busy believing in happily ever after and buying into the prince sweeping me off my feet. I was so selfishly absorbed with being in love with Brayden that I never stopped to realize that I was stomping on someone else’s happily ever after. That I was stealing someone else’s prince.”
Her voice was so genuine, her expression so open that Clarke felt a surge of frustration with himself for not realizing sooner how deeply she’d let the Brayden thing affect her. He’d known, of course, that it had. How could it not? The man she’d thought she’d marry had been married to someone else the entire time.
But he’d also thought that through her friendship with Claire and Naomi, she’d made peace with the fact that no part of it had been her fault. He told her that now, but she immediately shook her head.
“I should have checked,” she persisted. “I shouldn’t have taken his word that his divorce was nearly final. How dumb could I have been?”
“Don’t let yourself feel guilty because you believe the best in people. A jaded person might have second-guessed his claims, sure. But you’re not jaded.”
“Well, I wasn’t then,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Now I’ve got my guard up.”
He smiled back, but he felt a stab of regret and a fresh wave of anger that Brayden had taken someone as trusting and optimistic as Audrey and dulled her ability to always look for the best in people. She wasn’t a cynic now, by any means, but it bothered the hell out of him that the girl who still had dreams of a white wedding dress and doves assumed she wasn’t worthy of any of it.